


Bathed in black

by rossophantasma



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 16:52:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12730530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rossophantasma/pseuds/rossophantasma
Summary: We heard about Blake leaving at the end of Volume 3, but we never really got to see it! A short piece exploring some of the emotions going through Blake's head before she left for Menagerie.





	Bathed in black

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”  
The words rang in her ears as she spoke them.  


She knew that the girl to whom they were for couldn’t hear. But it didn’t matter; it was the mantra she needed to repeat. It was all she could say. It was all she could think.

Truthfully, there were no words that would ever convey the depth of her remorse. No words that would ever change what had happened.

She desperately clung to the girl’s hand.  _ Her only hand. _

The world was on fire around her, the new life she’d built crumbling down. In the distance she heard voices arguing, the mention of her name, a fearful goodbye. Everything was muffled, though, as if she were underwater. 

Drowning seemed like a good word to describe how Blake Belladonna was feeling. 

And still she refused to let go of the blonde girl, even while they bandaged the arm and cleaned the wound in her own chest. Even while they moved the two girls onto stretchers to transport them somewhere she didn’t really care enough to find out.  

Hours passed. Or maybe it was only minutes; time no longer had any meaning for her. 

She eventually understood that they were on some sort of airship. Heading down into Vale, probably. Someone tried to speak to her, but she didn’t bother to find out who.

All she could do was stare at Yang, and think about the events that had led her here.

 

* * *

  
She had known that when she started her new life at Beacon she would become part of a team. She knew that she would meet people, go to class with them, maybe to some extent even befriend them. But Blake Belladonna had promised herself that she would never get attached. She knew the consequences of getting too close to someone, so she put up walls, hid behind shadows, and vowed to keep everyone far away.

But then she met them, and her promise dissolved.

Ruby Rose.  
Some might call her naive, but to do so would undermine her greatest strength. It wasn’t that she was unfamiliar with the brutality and wickedness of the world; she had learned that the hard way from a young age. What made her so remarkable was that she _had_ experienced such evil, and _still_ chose to believe in the good of the world, and that it was worth fighting for. 

That was what made her their leader. 

Weiss Schnee.  
A cold exterior, perhaps, but beneath the surface lay a heart of gold.  Weiss had surprised Blake. She had been expecting an arrogant heiress, a pawn ignorant of the wrongdoings of her family and insensitive to the lives they had destroyed. In time she learned, though, that the Ice Queen was driven not by vanity but by her desire to atone for the crimes of her family. It was this defiance that Blake had grown to respect her for. And although Weiss would never admit it, she cared deeply for those she deemed worthy of her friendship.     

Yang Xiao Long.  
A girl that had intrigued Blake from the moment she saw her. She couldn’t explain why – maybe it was her tongue-in-cheek attitude, or her fierce protectiveness towards her younger sister. Whatever the reason, Blake had found herself drawn to the blonde girl in the Emerald Forest (although, of course, with all the noise Yang had been making it wasn’t hard to be). She had waited to reveal herself, wanting to see the girl in action, but if she was being fully honest her choice of partner had been made long before that. 

Yang Xiao Long.  
The girl who punched her way through everything, including Blake’s carefully constructed emotional walls. From a first glance, they were total opposites. Where she was night, Yang was day. Where she was cold, Yang burned hotter than them all. Even their combat styles were completely opposite, with Yang preferring direct hand-to-hand combat in order to land deadly blows, while Blake used her speed and agility to evade and outsmart her opponents. By all rights they should never have gotten along, but their contrasting natures somehow complimented each other and made them a formidable duo.       

Maybe it was because, at the heart of it, they weren’t really so different. 

They each had complicated pasts that they were striving to make sense of, and they both were haunted by the ghosts, living and dead, of those pasts. And they both built up walls around their minds and their hearts in order to protect themselves from the all too familiar sting of betrayal. 

Whether they were walls of fire or walls of shadow mattered not; walls were still walls, and Yang had been the first person ever to infiltrate her own. The person she had unwittingly let herself become attached to.  

Blake wondered if Yang felt the same about her. 

She thought back to their first meeting when Yang had dragged an unwilling Ruby over to befriend her, causing her to lose the page in her book. She had feigned annoyance, her promise twitching at the back of her mind, but in truth she was glad for the interruption. It was lonely behind those pages.

Yang had declared her a lost cause then, but after months of getting to know her Blake knew that nothing was really a lost cause for Yang. Every “no” was merely a new challenge for her to conquer.

She wondered if Yang would feel the same once she woke up.

 

* * *

  
After a while, the ship touched down in Vale and the rest of the passengers started to debark.

A few minutes passed before she heard the familiar  _ clink _ of Weiss’ heals. Apparently she had been the one trying to speak to her earlier. 

“They’re bringing over some vehicles to move all the injured to a nearby hospital. I’m going to go speak with the captain to see if I can find out anything else. Just wait here, it won’t be long.” She turned to leave, but paused. Her voice softened. “It’s going to be okay, Blake.” 

Blake closed her eyes in response. 

Weiss sighed and walked back out of the ship. 

Of course it wasn’t going to be okay, how could  _ anything _ be okay? Beacon had fallen, Pyrrha and Jaune were missing, and Yang… she would never be the same. 

And it was her fault. 

She knew that she should hurry, that Weiss would be back at any second, that anyone could walk in, but part of her desperately hoped that they would. That they would stop her and insist that she was being ridiculous. That they would force her to stay.

Because that was what she wanted, after all. She wanted more than anything to be by Yang’s side when she woke up. To comfort her, explain what had happened, be there to help her get through it. And she wanted to be there to thank her.

But she had learned the hard way that what she wanted had consequences. 

She knew that Yang would never understand. That she would feel the betrayal more than anyone else. 

It was a small price to pay, though, for keeping her safe. 

Blake sat up. It was now or never. 

Leaning over, she gently kissed the blonde girl on her forehead. 

“I… Forgive me.” 

Tears welled up in her eyes. She turned to leave, but something stopped her. How could she be so cruel? She had to leave  _ something _ , say  _ something,  _ a note, or… 

Blake reached up to her ears and slowly pulled apart her bow. She wouldn’t need it where she was going.

She shouldn’t be doing this, she knew. Once Yang had recovered, there was a chance she would be smart enough to put two-and-two together. And that, of course, would defeat the whole purpose of leaving. But the same part of her that hoped that someone would stop her also couldn’t help but hope that Yang would come find her. 

Letting go of Yang’s hand for the first time, Blake carefully tied the black ribbon into a bow around her remaining wrist.

The finality of the gesture made time suddenly speed up. She couldn’t breath. She had to leave,  _ now _ , before someone discovered her. Before she lost the last shred of courage she had left to do what needed to be done. 

Blake hurried out of the ship and stepped towards the darkened streets of Vale, unable to bring herself to look back. She gulped lungfuls of air, as if she hadn't been able to breathe since she'd spotted Adam through the cracked glass of the dining hall. 

A wild sob wracked her body, and she slammed her fist into the metal of the ship’s door, frustrated with herself for being so weak, for getting so attached. “Fuck.”

“Blake?” 

She quickly spun around, making eye contact with a blonde Faunus boy. 

“What are you doing?” His voice was full of concern.

She looked at him and shook her head, but was betrayed by her brief pained glance towards Yang. 

"What?" Slowly, realization dawned on his face. “No… Blake, no, you can’t!”

“Goodbye Sun.” 

She was gone before he could react, leaving behind a shadow of herself that had already begun to fade. 

She ran, leaping from building to building. Once she had put enough distance between herself and the others, she stopped. She could see Beacon tower from her vantage point. 

Blake thought back to when she left the White Fang. To when she left Adam. Back then she had left the only life she’d ever known, but she’d  _ wanted _ to do that. She had been leaving a life of hate and fear, striving towards something better.

This… was different. 

Beacon  _ was _ her something better. It had been her home, and her friends had been her new family. She loved them more than she ever thought she could love anybody. They had accepted her when no one else had, even when they had found out her secret. How could she just leave that all behind?

The tears flowed freely now, and what was left of her heart shattered into a million pieces.

She hated herself. She hated that she was running, and silently cursed whatever gods gave her the semblance that sealed her fate. 

But running was the only thing she knew how to do, and she would spend the rest of her life running if it meant keeping Yang and the rest of her friends safe. 

She looked up at Beacon tower and was alarmed to see half of it suddenly engulfed by ice. Panic filled her. Ruby had stayed behind,  _ could it be...  _ Before her brain could even process what she saw, her hand had already reached for Gambol Shroud.

Blake was seconds away from running back to make sure her teammate was okay. It was the sign that she had been hoping beyond hope for that would make her stay. 

Before she could move, however, her sharp feline eyes saw a ship flying towards the tower carrying Glynda, Ironwood, and Qrow. 

Her hand released Gambol Shroud. Whatever had happened up there, Ruby would be safe. She had people to take care of her. 

They didn’t need her.

She turned away, losing herself once again into the streets.

From shadows she was born, and to shadows she returned. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading, I hope you all enjoyed it! Anyone else impatiently waiting for that Bumblebee reunion?
> 
> P.S. I thought Blake leaving her ribbon was too cute of an idea to leave out, even if it's not canon. Who knows, maybe I'll do something more with it in the future :)


End file.
